While the arguments about forestry rage again, the central tenet of the argument, while mentioned in passing, fails to grab the political discourse in the way it should. It is absolutely guaranteed that Forestry Tasmania will lose vast amounts of taxpayers’ money because Native Forest Logging is economic madness. If we understand that losing money is guaranteed then maybe we can again question why we bother doing it?

When people talk about the money Forestry Tasmania lose they do not seem to understand that it happens for a reason – the way they grow trees costs way more than they get paid for the wood. The arguments about rates of return and such are nonsensical and irrelevant; Forestry Tasmania’s activities are loss-making by their very nature.

In plantations, hardwood woodchips are grown on rotations (time from planting to harvest) of around 10 years, often as low as 7. Softwood sawlogs come from 20-25 year rotations. In addition to this, softwood sawlogs have a recovery rate (the amount of the tree that actually becomes sawn timber) of 35-50% while hardwood recovery rates are 10-15%. The vast majority of Forestry Tasmania’s logging regime is on 85 year rotations.

An area used for plantations will produce many times the amount of timber than that which could be generated from a native forest regime on 85 year rotations. But still, we are not at the apex of the problem - interest rates - compound interest rates in particular. Money has a cost and we have to pay to borrow it, governments as well. And when we borrow it for 85 years the costs of funding the loan and the interest payments quickly become astronomical. In simple terms A=P(1+r)n where A is the final amount, P the principal, r the interest rate and n the number of years.

If we assume a long-term business interest rate of 10% then a dollar borrowed for 10 years costs us $2.60, over 20 years $6.73 but by the 85 year timeframe this one dollar costs us $3,298.97. Even at a ridiculously low rate long term business interest rate of 5% these numbers are $1.63, $2.65 and $63.25. It is the interest we pay on the interest that becomes the killer and this grows exponentially as each year passes.

So we get a heap less wood and we pay a mountain more money. This is why Gunns didn’t have native forest logging regimes, North Broken Hill didn’t, no private company does – it simply doesn’t make any financial nor economic sense. Private companies grow their wood in plantations (when they can’t get their hands on the free stuff from governments). And before anybody says ‘hardwood sawlogs are better’ I ask; how much extra are you prepared to pay for it? 5,000 times as much?

Forestry Tas obviously know this but they want to keep their well-paid jobs, so they muddle along surviving off the royalties they get from wood they didn’t grow and all the subsidies and grants that politics continues to throw their way. The ridiculousness of the decisions they make won’t become obvious until well after they have shuffled their mortal coil off.

We have ombudsmen who talk about rates of return being too low, we have study after study that identifies vast amounts of public money disappearing down the gullets of this ravenous industry yet nobody seems to state the obvious – it can’t make money no matter what!

The transition that Forestry talks about doesn’t exist, has never existed and will never exist. There is no way that we will have the same native forest logging regime in 85 years that we do now, so we will never even get back to the first coup that this process plants. And until we get back to this coup and start actually cutting down what we ourselves planted then we are not in a business – we are just clearing and mining the environment.

If we want a native forest logging industry then we need somebody to manage it, in a similar way to that which fisheries manage a ‘hunting and gathering’ activity. They simply control access and allow private businesses to take sustainable amounts of product from the wild. This ‘forestry’ would look nothing like the economic monstrosity we have now.

So next time you see a politician, or a ‘business’ person spruiking forestry, ask them which socialist economic philosophy they follow? And ask them how it is they support divorcing the supply of wood from the demand, such that we guarantee a supply amount regardless of what it costs to produce it? In short, ask them how it is that we simply ignore the realities of the real world where forestry is concerned? Then ask them if they would mind paying your share of the forestry bill because you simply don’t want to anymore?!

Finally, just for fun, ask them for the Business Plan. Ask them to show you in simple ‘back of the envelope’ terms, how they propose Forestry Tas can make money. They can’t. There never has been and never will be a Business Plan for native forest logging as preparing one would be almost as absurd as never having done so.

• *Brian Kohl is an economist and is currently a Director and CFO of one of Tasmania’s largest private hedge funds. In previous lives he has worked as an economic advisor to both Labor and the Greens.

• Examiner: Forestry priced out of Asia
26 Feb, 2012 04:00 AM

JET-SETTING around Asia speaking with the customers so important to the short and long-term future of Tasmania’s forestry industry, Bryan Green kept hearing the same thing: find a solution to the forestry wars.

Speaking exclusively to The Sunday Examiner, the Forestry Minister and Deputy Premier said buyers in Singapore, Japan and China had made clear the need for compromise between the industry and environmentalists.

``It is very important to them - they want the whole matter resolved,’’ he said.

Mr Green and state Opposition Leader Will Hodgman left for Asia on Tuesday in a bid to promote and discuss Tasmania’s forestry industry, largely in reaction to environmentalists lobbying customers of veneer mill company Ta Ann.

What started out as a sales trip quickly evolved into a fact-finding mission, and the news wasn’t good.

Market conditions in Asia are not favourable to Tasmanian forestry product exports. The high Australian dollar plus comparatively high production costs here mean Asian buyers are finding cheaper product elsewhere, particularly from Vietnam and Thailand.

Still, Mr Hodgman and Mr Green had very different views on what the message from the market meant.

On his return to the state last week, Mr Hodgman said the talks were a clear indication that his belief that the intergovernmental agreement on forestry between the state and federal governments needed to be torn up was correct.

Still in China, Mr Green yesterday said that was blatantly wrong.

``The IGA is not the cause of the problem: it’s in response to a change in the market,’’ he said.

``It is clear we need to act to put Tasmania’s forest industry on a sustainable footing. Putting your head in the sand and taking a do-nothing approach is simply not an option.

``Mr Hodgman was either not listening or simply didn’t want to hear the facts.’‘

Mr Green said compensation and funding received as part of the IGA had eased the impact that the market downturn had on many forestry workers and their families.
It may also hold the key to to the industry’s salvation, he said.

That will be the case if it brings lasting peace to Tasmania’s forests, with Asian market interest and the development of Gunns’ Bell Bay pulp mill now seemingly reliant on an end to the discord.
``We need a viable forest industry balanced by conservation outcomes that will allow businesses and investment in the sector to continue,’’ he said.

That investment, particularly the pulp mill, relies on a social licence.

It’s a message repeating that made by potential Gunns investor - some would say saviour - New Zealand-born billionaire Richard Chandler.

Mr Chandler’s company, Richard Chandler Corp, last week announced the parameters of the due diligence investigation it is undertaking before committing to invest $150 million in Gunns - an investment seen as critical to the prospects of getting the pulp mill built.

Key among the criteria that Richard Chandler Corp is investigating is whether its investment will lead to improving sustainable environmental practices and attract local support. In effect, will it have a social licence?

The Tasmanian Conservation Trust today claimed that the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) may weaken the protection granted to threatened species, by giving Forestry Tasmania an exemption to the Forests Practices Code, in a perverse strategy to allow them to maintain current logging levels from less forest.

“If the government weakens the protection currently given to the swift parrot, tiger quoll, wedge-tailed eagle, masked owl and other species, rather than improving them as expected following the Forests Practices Code review, what a field day the conservation movement will have telling the industry’s overseas buyers and consumers,” said TCT Director Peter McGlone.

“Having a forest practices system which could at least measure up to international standards was one thing the industry used to be able to hold up when criticized.

“To consider granting Forestry Tasmania exemptions to the Forest Practices Code, which would weaken protection of threatened species habitats, when the Code review found they needed to be strengthened, is just environmental and economic madness.

“Unless the IGA is changed, it proposes a perverse trade off where wilderness and world heritage areas get reserved and threatened species and threatened forest communities, found mainly outside of proposed reserves, get pushed faster towards extinction.

“If the IGA proposed reserves included these values then we would not be as concerned, but they contain very little habitat of threatened species or threatened forest communities.”

Ever since the Tasmanian Forests Statement of Principles, signed in October 2010, endorsed the retention of wood supply volumes, the TCT has been concerned that the biodiverse private forests and unreserved public forests would come under greater logging pressure as a result of new reserves. This now appears to be the reason the state government refused to implement the recommendations of the Forest Practices Code review.

Our concerns have been confirmed by the FPA’s submission to the IGA which stated that further reservation of state forest without an appropriate reduction in wood supply commitments will increase the intensity of logging on public and private land and will lead to dire environment outcomes.

In its submission to the IGA, the FPA warned that:‘From a significantly reduced area of state forest (resulting from the IGA reserves), Forestry Tasmania cannot meet both the TFIGA wood targets and the requirements of the current Forest Practices Code. That is, either the wood targets would need to be substantially reduced or Forestry Tasmania would need to be given an exemption under legislation to operate at a lower environmental standard than currently applies. This would have serious implications for the conservation of important values, including threatened species habitat, karst, water catchments and visual values.’
(FPA submission to the IVP, 6 December 2012, pages 2-3)

In its submission to the Independent Verification Panel, the TCT recommended that the state and Australian governments ensure the IGA delivers both the proposed reserves and improved threatened species protection through a stronger Forest Practices Code. To achieve these environmental outcomes, Forestry Tasmania’s wood supply volumes must be significantly reduced.

The current Forests Practices Code is seriously out of date and must be modernized to keep up with current science regarding biodiversity conservation. This is why the Forest Practices Authority - Tasmania’s independent forest practices regulator – triggering a review of the biodiversity provisions of the Code between 2007 and 2010. The state government suspended the review in July 2010, without explanation, and the review recommendations have not been implemented.

After first calling for the IGA to be shredded, he suddenly lurches over to the view that it (and its mouth-watering $276,000,000) is not the problem. The “compensation and funding” received under the IGA is not only nice, but “may also hold the key to the industry’s future”.

You won’t find a stronger endorsement of corporate welfare, unattached to any notion of the public interest, than that.

John Hayward

Posted by john hayward on 27/02/12 at 08:24 AM

An interesting by-product of Forestry Tasmania continuing its operations in its present mode, is the subtle climb in the amount of its losses including its unfunded superannuation liablities.

In my attempt to locate the true super liability amount I note that a “promised but yet unpaid amount of RBF Funds to the tune of $30+ million dollars” is deducted from the actual $150+ million dollars in unfunded liabilities as shown in the 2010-2011 financial report, thus comes in at $122 million dollars.

Now should this GBE of Forestry Tasmania be revoked or stripped of its mandate whereby it can no longer wreak its havoc upon our Native Forests, (also of its propensity to selling forest products at below cost of production,) it is easier to identify just what this “increasing burden of debts and liabilities” forestry GBE, is costing this State for F/T to continue along in their present non-sustainable manner of generating annual losses?

So now we are faced with the situation of how to prevent this carefully camouflaged finnacial time-bomb from its imminent detonation?
You guessed it, further generous taxpayer funding is now an absolute imperative, also imperative is to keep feeding all sorts of ambiguous financial data and mystical figures into its annual financial reports, (to further delay this amusingly interwoven and audited hidden financial time-bomb from its timely detonation.

What an odd way to run a Tasmanian GBE, tis almost a similar road to ruin as was Tote Tasmania?

Our thank you’s for these mayhems should be directed to our States Regulators and of course to our past and present Treasurers!

Posted by William Boeder on 27/02/12 at 11:37 AM

Hooray for Brian Kohl managing to cut through the falsity of FT.

Some years ago, at some Senate hearings at Rydges Hotel in Hobart, one of FT’s managers let slip that 30 years was the magic figure for profitability for logging trees they had grown. Beyond that, the profits declined.

If what he said is true, then FT’s management must be got rid of, so we can have some chance of obtaining quality timber at an affordable price.

Out with the lot of them

Posted by John Maddock on 27/02/12 at 12:32 PM

Brian Kohl has put up a model which will clearly fail to make money. However, the starting point in public forestry is an existing forest, which is harvested, and some of the income generated is used for reafforestation. In simplistic terms, it matters not what the period is before the next harvest, as the new trees are already paid for. There are of course some maintenance costs along the way eg fire protection, but if the harvesting is rotated through the forest on (say) a 100-year cycle, this too can be covered on a year-to-year basis.

There is also public utility in these forests apart from timber (eg recreation), which needs to be considered.

A final aspect of public forestry is all the other demands made on the forests and the managing agency (research, endless inquiries, government-imposed wood supply quotas to name a few) which heavily skew the $ figures if compared to a simple model for a private company. I have no idea whether Forestry Tasmania is being financially well run or not, but this sort of comparison by Mr Kohl is meaningless.

Posted by John McDonald on 27/02/12 at 12:50 PM

“We have ombudsmen who talk about rates of return being too low, we have study after study that identifies vast amounts of public money disappearing down the gullets of this ravenous industry yet nobody seems to state the obvious – it can’t make money no matter what!”

Correction!

Despite Gunns also today posting another half-yearly net LOSS of $173 Million, EVERYBODY except the Goverments, the Forest Industry and the mainstream media have stated the obvious – it can’t make money no matter what! Even the former buyers of our woodchips say so.

Posted by Russell Langfield on 27/02/12 at 01:16 PM

I don’t understand Brian Kohl’s scenario where FT has to borrow a certain amount of money somehow related to the planned logging of native forest and then has to pay interest on it for 85 years before they are in a position to repay the loan.

I don’t get it. Maybe someone can help me and explain. Do they have to borrow to let Artec come and log state forest? Or is it FT who does the logging? In that case, can’t they repay their logging costs from stumpage?

Posted by Garry Stannus on 27/02/12 at 04:15 PM

Garry #6.

It was nearly 20 years ago that a (then) recently retired FT forester suggested I should follow the compound interest trail.

That cryptic comment didn’t make sense until the aforementioned Senate hearings.

I have near enough to no knowledge of FT’s revenues and costs from clearfelling and re-sowing native forest, but my memory is that the costs of roading each new coupe is a very significant expense, when the mix of products sold from clearfelling the prices received for each type is considered.

Essentially, the capital invested in regeneration simply eats its head off when compound interest comes in to play. As Brian has said, this makes the present business model worthless (or maybe even less than worthless!).

In addition, it forces FT into logging much earlier than it should. (I think Pete Godfrey has posted on this topic recently).

As a consequence, timber quality is low and yield from each log is reduced. Frank Strie might come in here with the figures on the increase in yield when the diameter of a log is doubled.

From this mug farmer’s observations, the best chance of quality and profit will result from site selective logging and natural regeneration, i.e minimising inputs of capital and fossil energy.

Not FT’s current business model. Out with the lot of them.

JV

Posted by John Maddock on 27/02/12 at 07:01 PM

With regard to all matters present and future relating to this Tasmanian State’s forestry activities, I am of the belief that all enquiries should be givend to the individual directors of each corporate or major business entity that involves itself in forest activity in Tasmania.

My reasoning here is that by this method the people of this State shall not be beguiled by State media embellished news articles, in whom often provide a layer of a soft velvet-like substance carefully diluting whatever the grim and often anti-the-people or anti-the-environment impact that this sort of information actually holds?

For example: if a corporate body in this State had the intention of clearing say 6,000 hectares of forests in one big hit, then the resultant impact upon this State’s wildlife would be calamitous?
Yet not one media entity in this State would dare utter a word of censure to the ensuiung enormity of deaths, destruction of habitats, the endangerment to the inherent “threatened or protected wildlife species,” no nothing in that manner at all.

Instead we would be fed some sort of bull-shizered story of how great is that corporate raider or resource plundering outfit.

So we see here how complicit are each of these State’s individual media entities with their “supposed fair and equitable reportage, or even-handed un-biased reportage” as is presented in each day’s Tasmanian news broadcasts.

So it is through this softening process that the likes of each of the 2 major plundering forestry entities in our State are able to continue to inflict their many harms as they do, as they lead themselves down the pathway to insolvency, all the while taking their heavy tolls upon our Native Forest resources and our wildlife.

Thankfully for most of us we have a far better source of what’s happening in our State via the non-cowering agency of Mr Lindsay Tuffin’s Tasmanian Times.

Posted by William Boeder on 27/02/12 at 07:31 PM

Bryan Green acts like some modern day john wayne cowboy. The truth is, whilst the modern world is bucking the archaic trends, Bryan still wants to play cowboys and indians with countries like China, who apparently look to places like the Tasmanian Labor run Government to supply them with their cheap native back door loo paper…. because they need to try and save their pandas environment to look good. I’d suggest Bryan Green isn’t very bright, let alone considerate of the general populace of Tasmania.

Ok Ed … apparently if Tassie wants to pander to Chinese interests, Be and By large to B Green, apparently she needs to deduce a biggalo ….!!

Posted by Claire Gilmour on 28/02/12 at 10:44 AM

None so Blind……… Opinion by Barnaby Drake

For the last 30 years minimum, Forestry Tasmania has been operating under a series of deliberate lies and misconceptions. It knows about them and at one time tried to exploit this lie in their own favour - until they were caught. I see no reason to pull punches about this, as it has, and is costing us an absolute fortune in both money, reputation and environmental assets. The fact that the governments over the years have gone along with this suggests that they too were party to what amounts to a gigantic fraud perpetrated on the public.

Forestry with the aid of the Government have stolen Tasmania’s most valuable asset and exploited it for their own benefit. Harsh words, but judge whether they are true by the facts.

A short while ago, Forestry were forced to change their accounting methods because they were including in their accounts the value of all the forests under their administration as an asset in their books – an asset they did not own. By including the forest value, they were deliberately trying to hide their loss-making activities. They claimed ignorance and innocence when challenged. “They didn’t realise!”

However, now that they do realise at last that they are only custodians of these forests, this value has completely disappeared from their accounts. Normally this would now be treated as a cost, but no, there is no sign of it. When they required it as a smoke screen for their operation, it was there, but when it came to accounting, miraculously this value disappeared and suddenly the forests became a FREE RESOURCE. This carefully calculated value which they were so keen to use to show profitability evaporated into thin air and never appeared again in any form.

And that is the lie!

According to them, our forests are now worth nothing. Zilch! They are there for the taking and can be exploited at will with minimum returns to the State and to the public. It allows them to undersell to all their mates and disguise their negative contributions by selective, and basically dishonest, accounting. The forests are treated as a milch cow for their own use.

We have had successive Premiers, Treasurers and Ministers who have gone along with this, and in many instances, actively encouraged this lie. A Government Backed Enterprise (GBE) in the full sense of the words. They have made favourable laws; some have become board members of companies who have benefitted from this largess. Others have become lobbyists actively working to continue this destruction of our basic wealth. The industry itself supports highly paid jobs for those in it and benefits for those who have left it. The whole affair is run as an ‘Old Boys Club’ and would take a Royal Commission to even scratch the surface.

Here is how it works.

In all the time they have been in charge of the forests, in their accounting, they have never attempted to put a value on trees BEFORE harvesting, as this would be translated as a cost. It would add to the price they would have to charge their customers and would add to the returns they were obliged to make to Treasury and the people for this asset.

Continued….

Posted by Barnaby Drake on 28/02/12 at 04:04 PM

Cont….

Forests don’t just have a single price tag, they have several facets of ‘value’ as well, and NONE of these have been quantified. Difficult, possibly, but nevertheless they exist.

But now there IS something that has appeared in recent years that has got a price tag attached, and that too is ignored. That is the carbon value of the standing trees and the capacity to earn money in carbon trading. The Tasmanian forests have already been assessed as possessing up to six times the normal carbon content of other forests, and surely that must have a value above the normal offering of $11.50 per tonne. REDD is offering Forestry $1 Billion a year for the next 20 years to leave the forests standing, but that has been rejected by them. In fact, it is never even mentioned. They obviously spoke to the wrong people, because they would see this as an end to their current operations and the end of the gravy train for most senior employees. However, as there is also an exit package of $240 Million on hand as well, this should not be too painful an operation. After all, no other industry has been offered such benefits and incentives for redundancy. The advantage is, the losses regularly incurred by Forestry have the potential of being wiped out and a sum of $1 billion returned to the owners instead, with the added benefit that we also retain our capital asset base.

So now we DO have a figure for the value of the timber that forestry harvests annually. It is one Billion Dollars per year for the next twenty years! And that is the conservative figure without taking into account the higher amount that could possibly be attained by revaluing the carbon content in the forests by a factor of six.

That makes the simple overhead cost of the timber as $1 billion divided by the volume of annual saleable material, and that is before the harvesting cost and other overheads are added in – and there is also those non-quantified costs as outlined above plus the profit margin to consider. Looking at this equation, it becomes obvious that forestry has been under-selling our forests for many, many years, and by a very large amount too!

But here again, if the REDD offer is accepted, the $1 billion figure also allows us to retain the forests, so those other unquantified benefits are accrued as well. For Tasmania, that can only be a win-win situation. No wonder it is so unpopular!

For the record, let’s consider the alternative option of using $11.50 per tonne of biomass as the starting point. That includes 7.4 million tonnes of waste that is burnt annually and is valued at $85.1 million if left standing. Money up in smoke – literally. This figure of $11.50 per tonne is the same for ALL categories of wood, whether it be fine timbers, sawlogs, peeler billets, chip wood or fuel pellets. That is the carbon content value. Again, probably undervalued by a factor of six. The yield from each coupe would probably vary considerably so the biomass would have to be calculated as a total if clearfell was the method. This figure would then be multiplied by $11.50 and divided by the number of tonnes of saleable product to arrive at a basic cost per tonne before harvest costs were added, regardless of type.

I can already hear the objections. ‘This is a renewable product. We cut it down and it grows again, so this cost is artificial. We are a ‘sustainable’ industry’.

That myth I debunked in a previous article.

Cont….

Posted by Barnaby Drake on 28/02/12 at 04:09 PM

cont…

Yes, an allowance should be made for the regrowth volume, but not over the entire forest area. Only that which pertains to previously harvested coupes is admissible for accounting purposes. But even there, the relative area, including conversion to plantations, needs to be back-dated for thirty years since the start of clearfelling. Once a plantation is harvested the clock needs to be set back to zero again to compensate for the original carbon loss, which will basically put the price back up again to where it should be.

A prime forest containing trees from 1 to 1000 years old, once destroyed does not recover its original status and is always carbon negative. Forestry works on a ninety year theoretical cycle, but does not even stick to this figure, especially when their main customer requires ‘regrowth’ peeler billets from immature trees. The ninety year cycle is just another lie. It is based on the length of time that a forest will take to produce another marketable sawlog crop, not replace itself. It is also used by Forestry and the government in their propaganda when they inform the public that they are sustainable because they only harvest less than one ninetieth of available forests, so they can always recover in the cyclic time period. (David Llewellyn drew me little diagrams of how this worked when I consulted him. He did not mention that at the time, most of this clearfelled forest was being turned into e.nitens plantations due for harvesting again within twenty years.) The first part of this statement is now totally untrue and the diminishing area of old growth is being harvested at a far greater rate than one ninetieth part per year. Secondly, the so-called recovery cycle has been reduced from ninety years to between forty and fifty years before reharvesting, leaving a net deficit of over 50% of carbon recovery. At the time of reharvesting, currently the equation is started again, but based on the new harvest time and ignoring the deficit of 50% carry-over from the original felling. Another misrepresentation. Further, these figures do not take into consideration that a 400 year-old tree takes 400 years to replace; neither is there any allowance for the lost understorey or burnt humus in the calculation. 7.4 million tonnes annually!
The permanent storage of carbon in saw products and fine timber amounts to less than five percent of the total felled, although the importance of this is a main part of Forestry’s public relations misrepresentation. An exaggerated reason and a disguise for their normal modus operandi of bulk, under-priced timber products.

Over the past years, many have benefitted from these deliberately inept accounting practices, but unfortunately, not the public, the actual owners of these assets. Mostly there has been a consistent cash flow from taxes to Treasury, from Treasury to Forestry, from Forestry to private industry, from private industry to shareholders AND to Party funds. The latter keeps the whole outfit nicely oiled and running. The missing link is from Forestry back to Treasury.

It is about time the spotlight was focussed on some of these dubious accounting methods and the questions should be asked why Ministers and Opposition are currently out trying to sell an even more ridiculous model to foreign enterprises, and only for the benefit of a few sacred workers in a remarkably dubious industry?

Barnaby Drake

Posted by Barnaby Drake on 28/02/12 at 04:09 PM

It now follows the traditional owners will have first choice over the disputed territory(430,000ha)
Nothing left in the deal for the greedy ENGO’s and their followers.
Indigenous certified timber hitting the market couldnt be better for Tasmania’s image!
Save yourself Barnaby #11,12 &13; its all over, leave it to the emerging generation of indigenous foresters.

Posted by Robin Halton on 01/03/12 at 08:56 PM

#14. Unfortunately for your argument, Robin, Forestry Tasmania is only the custodian of the forests, not the owner. They have no say in where it goes to after they themselves end up in th trash can.

However, that being said, they could not be WORSE administrators than the current lot!

Posted by Barnaby Drake on 01/03/12 at 10:00 PM

#14. Interesting question for you Robin, what will Forestry Tasmania do now that they can no longer torch that portion of the State’s gifted away Native Forests.
(Obviously this can only be an illegal action, a casual read of the deeds and actions entrusted to this “failing Forestry Tasmania team of buckeroos,” GBE) will attest to this.
Will your former colleagues look to managing the grasslands throughout Tasmania, same purposes of course- for fuel reduction burns, regeneration burns, how about clear-felled hay paddock burns?
Then too, how much havoc could be created by fuel reduction burning upon each and all of Tasmania’s button-grass plains?
I think I might give all my State government payments for this and that and whatever else, to the Tasmania Aboriginal people, what’s good and legal for Forestry Tasmania must apply to the people of Tasmania, why can’t we all be free agents in the same manner as Forestry Tasmania?

Posted by William Boeder on 02/03/12 at 12:11 AM

Re #14
You should save yourself, Robin.

I think the Indigenous Tasmanians are a lot more intelligent than your FT mob.

They would know very well that they wouldn’t make a cent following FT’s advice and would make more money each year than FT could ever promise by doing absolutely nothing and just leaving it standing as a massive carbon sink and being paid for it.

Pity you and FT haven’t got your heads around that.

Personally I doubt the Tasmanian Government would EVER give that much land back to the rightful owners.

Posted by Russell Langfield on 02/03/12 at 06:16 AM

Robin at #14: actually it’s 572k ha, not just the 430k ha in contention, and there’s also >1m ha elsewhere in the state not in contention.

Greedy ENGOs and followers? Greedy for trying to save as much HCV native forest as possible from the maw of FT?

We were promised that woodchipping would be about not wasting what was left on the forest floor. Instead we see clearfelling where nothing is left standing. Where 85% of a forest coupe ends up chipped. Where Ta Ann ends up with some of the logs from the coupes which according to the TFIA, Clause 27 et al., were not to be logged in the interim and where some few also almost unbelievably, actually end up as saw logs in local mills. I can’t say I’m sure about the last claim - the one about the saw logs ... that’d be ‘commercial in FT confidence’ I suppose.

And then, with all that accounted for, what is left ‘on the forest floor’ gets torched. I can see in my mind’s eye a certain hillside on the slopes of Mt Mueller, below the Observer Tree, where the eucalypts have been taken out and the celery-top pines knocked over, not given the chance for maturity, looking like pick-up sticks on the hillside and waiting for autumn or spring ‘clean-up’ fires.

Posted by Garry Stannus on 02/03/12 at 06:30 AM

Garry Stannus, only last night I heard from a local identity to his boast of having one of the very few Celery-Top Pine kitchens in our village,
Obviously there are and could be far better uses made of Celery-Top Pine.
To think of the applications of this “becoming rarer species of native tree, only to find that it is to hot to trot to under via the Forestry Tasmania torch?

I see this as the mounting of further wasteful and disgraceul actions toward potentially this expensive Native Forest wood product by this hopelessly destructive and devoutly untrusted GBE of Forestry Tasmania.

Posted by William Boeder on 02/03/12 at 07:51 AM

Thank you William,

your Miscellaneous Works of the Scot ... are with the Post, printed as they were consequent to the Corsican’s Waterloo, I do hope they will suffer the weekend journey easily.

A short-rotation, managed plantation apparently (If I have read the above ideas correctly) has more potential profit. Yet, surly, for native forest biodiversity retention it is better to work with native re-growth forests on a 90 year or more rotation? could the cash loss of FT be balanced by the potential env.gain? (as compared to the env. loss in Monoculture plantations)

Some of the timber that is apparently being sold below ‘real cost’ is being used by the tasmanian people - housing materials etc. if the timber was sold at the full cost suggested by this article and comments, so that FT could run at a profit… then the cost of that timber to all Tasmanians would go up. making the cost of building, gardening, fencing, craft, furniture, etc. go up. FT’s losses are being supported by TAX paid by all tasmanians? so, in a roundabout way, are we not paying the extra cost of the timber? if the ‘full cost’ of timber was charged, would the Gov reduce our Taxes to compensate for the rise in the cost of living?

Posted by Ezra on 09/03/12 at 09:19 AM

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